Re: Digital Distractions and the Ryan?Wyden Plan_With HIT, Mobile Medical Apps, EHR, and CPOE devices, the health care professionals' cognition has deteriorated, time is being wasted, and paradoxically to your thought, medical malpractice lawsuits are on the rise and care is more expensive with no change in outcomes.

The House and Senate wiould be wise to repeal HITECH; and the hand held mobile medical apps whould be bannned by the FDA.

8:09 pm December 15, 2011

PNHP Doctors, 20,000 strong wrote :

This is nothing but rationing via limiting voucher-based premium subsidies.
Besides campaign contributions, really no reason not to go for single payer national health insurance
with private doctors, hospitals and pharmacies.

2:29 am December 17, 2011

Anonymous wrote :

Means testing for Medicare is a good idea. Warren Buffet should pay more than $700, global fee for a cholecystectomy.

1:45 pm December 19, 2011

PNHP Parakeet Doctor wrote :

To my colleague PNHP doctors, a single payer national health insurance program clearly has much popular support and may well become a reality in the near future. However, I disagree with the above poster who claims to represent all of us. There is no reason for doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies to remain private in such an arrangement.

On the contrary, with the government paying for all of medical care, the medical delivery system would rightfully become a regulated public utility.

Within this utility doctors, hospitals and pharmacies would then be government employees, with reasonable salaries paid from public funds, and answerable to policy, work rules, and budgets laid down by the department of health & human services.

Maybe you old guys want to keep on slaving away 80-100 hours a week, day and night, to pay your taxes and malpractice insurance - not me. I want a life and I want a family, supported by a regular job doing what I went to school to learn--practicing medicine.

6:20 pm December 19, 2011

Kidding, right? wrote :

You really think you'll have a sustainable career working less than 40 hours a week for government health care wages? Do you notice in other countries, where 'socialized medicine' exists, docs work on the outside to supplement their incomes (ie in a two tiered system)?
Maybe move to France...

6:26 pm December 19, 2011

PNHP Parakeet Doctor wrote :

The government will pay physicians high wages. That's the part of PNHP's philosophy I agree with and why I joined. Lots of government workers in professional classes make high wages, it wouldn't be different with physicians. Besides, once the insurance companies are out of the picture, the government can use the billions it pays now to insurance companies, to increase physician reimbursements. We'll be fine on a government wage.

Physicians' incomes in Europe have lagged behind America for decades--that's neither a reasonable or a valid comparison.

5:14 am July 25, 2012

Foteinh wrote :

As a side note, a minor point that I found fascinating was the staiisttc about how many people get contacted each year by collection agencies regarding medical bills.Having had several medical problems in my family over the past 5 years I have been contacted numerous times by the collection agency that works for Christiana Care. It is not because I am delinquent in my bill at all, but because CC has a terrible track record at filing with the insurance companies, and then bills you before the window with, say, BCBS, closes.Then, when insurance payments are still pending, CC starts billing you as if they had failed to pay. When payments do come in, CC credits them to the oldest outstanding balance rather than the service indicated by the insurer. As a result, CC gets the bills hopelessly mangled.I am not suggesting that this is the case for everyone, but people in both industries (insurance and hospitals) tell me that hospitals tend to send items to collection far faster than other industries, and without real cause in many cases.Point being: simply being contacted by a collection agency for medical bills is NOT necessarily a strong indicator of financial trouble on the part of the indebted party.

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